Islam’s Secret Army?

FOR YEARS, WESTERN governments paid little heed to an Islamic organisation called Hizb-ut Tahrir (HT, or Party of Liberation) dedicated to setting up a worldwide caliphate caliphate restoring the religious and political authority through which the Ottoman sultans ruled an empire that stretched from Europe to Asia for more than 500 years.

Even though this secretive, highly disciplined Sunni Muslim espouses overthrowing the governments of Arab and Asian states, as does Osama bin Laden who also calls for the return of a caliphate based on Islamic religious Shari’ah law, HT was not seen as a particular threat in the West. But these days, bolstered by the belief that following 9/11 the West has declared war on Islam, the transnational party is increasingly seen in many quarters as the ideological vanguard of radical Sunni Islam.